Maundy Thursday: Hospitality, Service and Love

Exodus 12:1-14

Psalm 116:1, 10-17

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Hospitality is perhaps what we might call a “forgotten” spiritual discipline.  Yet, it seems to pervade much of the Bible.  In the Hebrew Scriptures it is woven into the Mosaic law, most likely due in part to its central role in the nomadic culture out of which Judaism arose and was formed; after all, when you are wandering you hope others will offer you shelter from the harsher elements, as we all as food and water, and so modelling that practice is a fairly good idea.  In the New Testament also hospitality features largely.  So many of Jesus’ parables are centred around a banquet to which all are invited, signalling God as host welcoming everyone.  Jesus’ vision  of the kingdom, is one marked most significantly by God’s hospitality.  His entire ministry is one of bodily hospitality, welcoming disciples, friends, the distressed and desperate, the oppressed and neglected.  It’s hardly surprising that one of the most consistent criticisms levelled at Jesus by his detractors in the Gospels is that he offers hospitality to those beyond the social pale, and he in turn accepts their hospitality and breaks the strict social convention governing table fellowship.  The Gospel of Luke details how “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And [that] the Pharisees and the scribes [grumbled and said].  This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:1-2) Indeed, we can understand Jesus’ very presence among us and his entering into  human history as intimately linked to hospitality.  In a talk, the notes of which are posted online, Richard Horner notes the connection between incarnation and hospitality, sayng that while “incarnation is the crossing over into other people’s worlds so genuinely that they see Christ in you…, hospitality is the welcoming of others into your world so openly that they see Christ in you.”

Christian hospitality is a lot more than simply a social code among people of polite manners and within polite society.  It is much more radical than that, breaking down divisions and crossing categories, including that of divine and human.  And what we discover as we live with the Scriptures and the Tradition, is that hospitality is not an added extra, an optional feature, but a commandment, and central to the way we are to live our lives as Christians – “whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:27-28) – and it is one of the chief criterion by which we will be judged – “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;…[for] I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:34-35)  But tonight, just in case we haven’t quite got it, Jesus makes this truth clear with the immediacy of flesh touching flesh, by kneeling before his disciples and washing their feet, performing the customary act of a host in the ancient near east; and then he says to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am.  So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one anothers feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.  Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.  If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” (John 13:12b-17)  And in case, we still do not get it, the Church calls for us to re-member Jesus actions, making those past events, a palpable, present reality.  

What Jesus reveals to his disciples then and to his disciples now is that at the heart of Christian hospitality is humility, the willingness to see the other as not so unlike us, and in need our ministry, our ministrations and welcome.  Christian hospitality so often and usually resolves itself in service, most especially as we recognize that we are all of us in same boat.  When sensitively considered, we recognize that Christian hospitality doesn’t actually cross social boundaries and categories, but lives the reality of God’s perspective that these do not in fact exist, that in Christ they have been permanently and for ever brought down.  This realization, enables us to come into the reality of our inherent same-ness, as it were; that we are all in this together.  We are all of us equally as high, equally as low; and all of this touches on the idea of humility as it affirms we are all made from humus, the Latin word for earth or ground  This is well expressed in little-known hymn from the Sacred Harp tradition, Cross of Christ.  Contemplating Christ’s command of tonight, it asks the powerful question: “Shall I a worm, refuse to stoop, by fellow worm disdain?  I give my vain distinctions up, since Christ did wait on men.”

We have gone from hospitality to service to humility.  But is there here a spiritual discipline?  I would suggest most emphatically, yes.  Not least, because the purpose of any spiritual discipline is to help us grow into better “disciples” of Christ, better equipped to witness in the world to his transforming love; and certainly hospitality and its attendants make that love palpable.  All the spiritual disciplines we have looked at throughout Lent help us  to be the kind of people who make Christ’s love known in the world.  Hospitality, service, is the one discipline which shows it forth very directly, very immediately.  While the others foster in the us the ability to love; the practice of hospitality makes love manifest.  And again, just in case this isnt’t crystal clear tonight’s Gospel highlights it– “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35); and the name by which we know today, Maundy Thursday brings home the fact, that ultimately this evening is about that mandatum, that commandment to love.

Hospitality is the spiritual discipline which calls us out of ourselves most emphatically, bringing us into the awareness of the fundamental connectedness we have with one another.  It directs us to service, and shows forth love.  It is telling that the night before he is put to death, it is this which Jesus makes most manifest.  Whether it is in washing his disciples feet as John records, or in breaking bread with them as the other Gospels depict, the night before his death Jesus performs acts of  hospitality, service, humility and love, modelling for his disciples a path which must inform our spirituality if we are to be called by his name:  “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35)  May our lives and actions make us ever worthy to be counted among one of his own.